New LG Display: 80 inch 8K and 40 inches Oled TV Ultra HD in 2019

On the occasion of the 2017 Europe Oled Day event, LG Display – the leading supplier of Oled screens for TVs – presented its plans for the coming years.

The growth of LG Display in the TV segment is impressive. By 2015, the manufacturer had only two customers: LG Electronics, of course, which carried the Oled technology, and Panasonic, which was one of the first TV manufacturers to make contact with the Korean company, Panasonic TX-65CZ950E.

Today, the company supplies 13 manufacturers (LG, Sony, Panasonic, Loewe, Philips, Skyworth, Metz, Konka, Grundig, Changhong, Vestel, Toshiba and Bang & Olufsen). As a result of this interest in Oled, a new P10 plant in Paju, South Korea will ensure that sufficient volumes are supplied to all manufacturers. In 2016, LG Display produced just under one million large-sized Oled tiles. This figure rises to almost 2 million this year, and LG Display is counting on 3 million units next year and more than 6 million in 2020.

In 2018, LG Display does not expect much change in the range. The manufacturer continues to supply 55,65 and 77-inch Ultra HD screens as well as a 55 inch Full HD screen.

The first change in the range is expected to take place in 2019 with the arrival of the first 80-inch tiles supporting 8K definition. However, this definition is of little interest in Europe for example, where Ultra HD/4K content is already very limited.

While by 2020, Ultra HD content is expected to multiply through the streaming and democratization of Ultra HD Blu-ray, 8K content still seems to be inaccessible with current technical means (limited bandwidth on the Internet and via DTT multiplex). LG Display concentrates on design, especially with its original screens for professional display (double-sided, concave, convex, transparent) and also a few outlets in the consumer segment (window wallpaper screens, rollable and flexible).

Another information that does not appear in the presentation: LG Display prepares many Oled screens with a diagonal of 40 to 49 inches for the European market.
However, production of these screens is not expected until 2019. We can, therefore, expect to see commercialization by the end of 2019, or even early 2020. As far as fares are concerned, these tiles will not necessarily be cheap, and Oled 40 to 49-inch televisions should be sold at the same prices as 55-inch models, which offer economies of scale.

Finally, we asked LG Display President Sang-Deog Yeoux if Oled’s mid-sized screens for laptops and PC monitors would be developed. He simply told us that nothing was planned for the time being. The situation is therefore not about to improve on that front. The few laptops equipped with Oled screens and the only Oled monitor on the market (Dell UP3017Q) will, therefore, rely for some time on Oled tiles produced by Samsung Display.